Missing, Murdered Aboriginal Women: RCMP Review Hundreds Of Cases

OTTAWA - The RCMP says it has completed a "comprehensive file review" of murdered and missing aboriginal women and girls within Mountie jurisdiction — more than 400 in all — and will continue to pursue outstanding cases.

The review represents the latest effort by the Mounties amid public concern about the perils faced by aboriginal women and allegations of police inaction.

A special parliamentary committee is holding hearings on the issue, and calls persist for a full-fledged national inquiry.

The Native Women's Association of Canada said Thursday it will give the RCMP its list of aboriginal women who may have met with violence or simply disappeared — but only names gleaned from public sources such as newspapers and posters.

The association is not prepared to provide the Mounties with private details of cases that may have come from family members and friends of the missing.

"We want to be careful in how we do things," said Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of the association.

Drawing on information scattered in often-forgotten public sources, the association spent years compiling a database of 582 cases through the Sisters in Spirit initiative.

The association began working with the RCMP's National Aboriginal Policing Services branch in 2009 and provided the Mounties with names from its database in cases where there was little information to go on.

The list of 118 names included 60 murdered women or girls, three missing ones and 55 whose status was unknown. Of these, 64 turned up on a police database.

It prompted the RCMP to ask the native women's association for all 582 names to see if any others could be found in police files. But confidentiality guarantees to family members have delayed further sharing.

Dumont-Smith said the association recently agreed to give the RCMP names that have already been published elsewhere.

"We haven't determined how we will do that. We've only decided that, yes, we would share the names," she said in an interview.

"I imagine that we're not just going to release all our 500-and-some names at once. We'll do it in a progressive fashion, maybe region by region. But that hasn't been worked out yet."

The RCMP and the association are working "to reconcile all available data" pertaining to missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls, said Sgt. Greg Cox, an RCMP spokesman. "We have not received all information from NWAC yet, but we expect it shortly."